Hi guys welcome back. In this video we're going to be talking about how to take notes as you're reading your novel or short story. I have three different note taking the handouts and the first one is a character chart. On the character chart, what you do is whenever a new character comes in, you write down their name and if you if you can get their age, usually it's their name and physical appearance for sure at the beginning, and you write down as much information as the author gives you when the when the character first comes in, and then you can add more as you read as things pop up later. So try we're trying to write down their name, age, physical description, and their personality traits like are they clever, witty, evil, sneaky, honest, loyal. Both types of things.

And then also whether or not they're a major or minor character. And the next resource that I have for you to print off is a handout that is a timeline of events. And basically what you do for that is go you go through and as you're reading, you write down major events as they happen from beginning to end in the story. And try not to write down every little thing, but just the major thing. So maybe read the whole chapter and then write down a major thing if it did happen during that chapter. And just add to it as you go through your novel or short story.

And the third thing that I have for you is one that I really would like for you to fill out even if you don't fill it out in a lot of detail, but it's really important and that is the plot map. certain elements are of plot are in every story doesn't matter what genre you're reading. You will still see the same things as you're going through novels or short stories. So the main elements of plot are the first thing is the exposition. And that's where the author introduces the characters and the setting. And there's an inciting moment where the main character's world goes from Normal to conflicting, where it's not normal, and things have changed.

And now there are problems that that person needs to face. Okay, and as you move forward, you are in the rising action. It's like you're going up a mountain. Or you can also think of it like you're on a roller coaster ride going up, up up until you get close to the top where you're going to have this crazy moment and then go down. A big drop. Okay, so a lot of people think of it kind of like a mountain though.

So you're climbing up with the rising action and the conflict is going to keep getting more and more complicated things get worse for the main character. worse and worse as we go. And then when you get to the climax of the story, it's usually the most exciting part. And it can be a big action scene or some kind of, you know, everything is going crazy. And we don't know how the main character is going to get through this. It's it's the worst moment.

And then they have to make a decision. And that's the climax, it's a turning point for the main character where they decide I'm with them, or I'm not with them, and I'm going on my own, or I do love this person. And now I'm going to do this or that to make sure that they know it, something where it's a turning point, things change for them and they make a decision and then their life is going to change forever because of that. And after the climax or turning point, it's usually pretty far into the book further than most people might think. And then you go into the falling action where the author wraps up the loose ends what happened to the other Characters how to things kind of settle down for the main character. And then you get to the resolution or denouement, if you want to say the fancy version of it, the French word for it.

And that is the ending of the story, where we find out whether or not the main character lived happily ever after. Or maybe they didn't. And maybe things were kind of rough at the end for them. But whatever the ending is, that is the ending the resolution, the very last part of the book. So as you're reading, I'd really like for you to go ahead and try to identify all the different elements of plot in your story just for to see how this all wraps up. It's kind of like looking for clues in like, as you're reading, you're looking for clues and asking yourself, how is this conflict going to continue to get worse and when am I going to get to the turning point for this character because you know, those things are coming.

So it's just a really, it's a helpful way to be aware as you're reading and identifying the really cool elements of plot better in all Great forms of literature. So I'd really like for you guys to use that plot map and try to identify those things as you're reading. The next few note taking methods that I'm going to share are things that you can do that are not printed on the handouts and the resources. But there's something there are things that are very useful. And the first one is if you own the book, right in it, even though that may seem weird, but several of us have done this in high school or college. As we're learning and we've already bought a book.

We're underlining things that our teacher has set are important putting stars next to things, just making notes in the margin. It's really helpful if you don't mind how it looks. And honestly, I have books that I've written and it's really kind of cool to go back and see what I wrote if I ever reread them and see what I was thinking, you know, and it may have been 20 years ago, and it's just really interesting to see what I was thinking and then add more knowledge Now, so writing in the book is actually a really good thing. If you don't feel comfortable writing, but you'd like to just still mark a few things in your book, you could always use highlighters highlighting is great. You can also highlight in your Kindle, if you're using an E reader, they usually have the highlighting option and you can highlight you can also see where other people have highlighted things.

So highlighting is great. You could even get crazy and use different colors for different things and you know, highlight different characters in one color that are coming in, or plot things in another color. So that's something you can have fun with, if you like highlighting, if you are not comfortable actually writing on the pages of your book, or maybe you have a library book and you want to just jot down some quick notes. You could always use sticky notes and just write yourself little notes, stick them inside the pages so that you can tag them and look back and find information and then if it is a library book that you have to return You can always transfer those sticky notes onto another piece of paper or into a spiral notebook and kind of use those to guide you through the plot. So sticky notes are another good thing.

Another method you could use is writing down a really brief one sentence or maybe two at the most summary of each chapter as you go through the novel or short story. Well, it'd be chapters in a novel, or the events in the short story. And so what you're doing is just condensing it, which is sometimes difficult to do but it's it's really helpful. Say, what is the main thing that happened and just put it into one concise sentence. So you can do that also write chapter summaries. Another way to take notes that a lot of people use is with technology.

There's a program called Evernote that you can go to Evernote comm and get an account For free and take notes and keep track of them in there. And it can be really beneficial if you prefer to just type things on your laptop. And then another one is if you wanted to, if you have Microsoft, on your computer, Microsoft OneNote is something that comes with Windows 10 already, and many of you already have that on your computer. And it's really great for taking notes. And then the last one is just using a Google Doc, which many of us already use for other things, and just writing all your notes in there and keeping track of it. And you can save it onto your drive and save them by book title and things like that.

And just keep track of it that way. So those are some ways you can also take notes with technology and in our next lecture, we're going to talk just a little bit about how to organize your notes once you're done reading. But for now, I know you guys are reading every day and I'm really proud of you for taking on this project I know that it's going to help you as a reader, it's going to help you have more fun and enjoyment, reading your book looking for the different things that are going on with the plot and the conflict and the characters. And so I'm really proud of you for working hard at this and I will see you in the next video where we're going to organize your notes